Podcast: Ep411: Poems in Practice and in Theory

Podcast: Ep411: Poems in Practice and in Theory

August 5, 2022

Author(s): The New York Times

Podcast: The Book Review

1 / 1Poems in Practice and in Theory

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Elisa Gabbert, the Book Review's On Poetry columnist, visits the podcast this week to discuss writing about poetry and her own forthcoming collection of poems, her fourth, ā€œNormal Distance.ā€ ā€œWhen I’m writing what I would call nonfiction or an essay or just pure prose, I’m really trying to be accurate,ā€ Gabbert says. ā€œI’m not lying, I’m really telling you what I think. There’s very minimal distance between my persona on the page and who I really am. And then when I’m writing poetry, that persona really takes on more weight. I’m definitely creating more distance, and it really feels more like fiction or even more like theater, I might say. I’m really more creating a character that’s going to be speaking this monologue I’m writing.ā€ Ian Johnson visits the podcast to talk about his review of ā€œGolden Age,ā€ a novel by Wang Xiaobo recently translated by Yan Yan. The novel, set against Mao’s Cultural Revolution, made waves in China when it was originally published there in the 1990s. ā€œIt was controversial primarily because of sex, there’s a lot of sex in the novel,ā€ Johnson says. ā€œThe sex is not really described in graphic detail; this isn’t Henry Miller or something like that. It’s more like they’re having sex to make a point: that they’re independent people and they’re not going to be trampled by the state. And it’s very humorous — he talks about sex using all kinds of euphemisms, like ā€˜commit great friendship,’ stuff like that. It’s meant to be a sort of parody, a somewhat absurd version of a romance.ā€ Also on this week’s episode, Elisabeth Egan and Dave Kim talk about what people are reading. John Williams is the host. Here are the books discussed in this week’s ā€œWhat We’re Readingā€: ā€œTime Shelterā€ by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel ā€œThe Displacementsā€ by Bruce Holsinger ā€œThe Annotated Wizard of Ozā€ by L. Frank Baum, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

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The Book Review
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The Book Review

The New York Times

The world's top authors and critics join host Gilbert Cruz and editors at The New York Times Book Review to talk about the week's top books, what we're reading and what's going on in the literary world. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp